Poll: 29 percent of U.S. voters have a favorable view of Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who has produced a flood of sensational headlines as President Donald Trump’s outside attorney, has only a 29 percent favorability rating among American voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

The poll found that 44 percent of voters have an unfavorable view of Giuliani, while 25 percent said they hadn’t heard enough about him.

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Giuliani joined Trump’s legal team in April as the president looked to build out the group of lawyers combating special counsel Robert Mueller’s sprawling probe into whether Trump aides colluded with Russian officials meddling in the 2016 election and whether the president tried to obstruct justice.

The relationship hasn’t always gone smoothly. Last month, Trump distanced himself from Giuliani’s bombshell explanation that Trump had repaid his longtime attorney Michael Cohen for a hush money deal he struck with porn star Stormy Daniels.

“He’ll get his facts straight,” Trump said at the time.

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Giuliani has continued generating major headlines, claiming Trump has the power to pardon himself, accusing Mueller’s team of trying to “frame” Trump, and stating that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “got back on his hands and knees and begged” Trump to reschedule their meeting in Singapore.

The Quinnipiac poll also measured the favorability of other core members of Trump’s team, finding that 30 percent of voters have a favorable view of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, while 36 percent have an unfavorable view.

Vice President Mike Pence has a 35-39 percent favorability rating, while first lady Melania Trump has a much higher 49-17 percent favorability rating, the poll found.

For Trump himself, the poll reported that 40 percent of voters approve of the way he is handling the job, compared to 51 percent who disapprove. That’s a notch up from April, when 39 percent of voters said they approved of his job performance.

The Quinnipiac poll was conducted from May 31-June 5 and surveyed 1,223 voters across the nation via landlines and cell phones. The poll’s margin of error was plus-or-minus 3.4 points.